The Last Thoughts of Lady Van Tassel
by RaeLaser1
Summary: The last scene between Lady Van Tassel and the Hessian from her point of view; What really happened when she got locked inside the Tree of the Dead? Movie-based, duh. Please R


This is just a bit of drabble from Lady Van Tassel's point of view, as she is dragged into hell, plus a little poem.

Disclaimer; If you really think I own Sleepy Hollow, then I'm a little surprised you can even read this.

Mary Archer Van Tassel slowly stirred into wakefulness, wincing in pain. That brat had nailed her well and good. Her head throbbed rhythmically.

She was not on the ground where she had fallen. She was not on the ground at all. Her right hand only encountered empty air. She slowly looked up. Dread was coiling in her gut, but she was too muddled yet to work out why. Up, up she looked, and . . .

Met _his_ eyes.

_(No, God no!)_

For a moment, she stared blankly, refusing to understand what her eyes were showing her. Then a slow grin stretched across those filed teeth, and she broke out of her denial, tried to scream, but her vocal cords had locked together and refused to make more than a dull whimpering sound.

_(I repent! God help me, buy back my soul! I recant witchcraft! Help me!)_

He hadn't changed at all in those years that had passed. His face, forever burned into her memory, remembering the almost tender, almost pleading look in his white-blue eyes. The resentment she had felt at _yet another_ adult trying to control her. The smug satisfaction as she had snapped the branch and drawn his pursuers to him. The awe she had felt at his prowess. The sharp regret at having sealed his fate. The passionate, spur of the moment plea; prayer almost; to Satan to bind him to earth as her slave in exchange for her soul.

The tender, pleading look was gone, replaced by unholy satisfaction and glee. He chuckled malevolently. _(No. No. This can't be happening. Not to me. Not to me. I took every precaution! Fully enslaved him! How could this happen?)_

At that moment, her voice broke free, and she began to scream. And then her scream was trapped once again, forced back into her throat by his lips and teeth locked around her mouth, _biting down_ on her face. One of his teeth broke all the way through her lip and scraped up against her own teeth. Blood began trickling down her chin.

Finally, when she became less concerned about screaming than breathing, he ripped free, not bothering to disentangle his teeth first. He leaned back, cackling and yelling, her blood smeared about his mouth. Mary sobbed like a baby. _(Why me?! I never did anything wrong!!)_ She couldn't even struggle, his grip was ironhard, and she was cradled in his arms, almost protectively. She could barely move her arms, and the circulation to her legs was being cut off. They tingled faintly.

_(WHY?! WHY?!)_

He turned the horse about, and then Lady Van Tassel realised exactly what it was that he intended to do, as they began charging at the Tree of the Dead, its terrible, gruesome roots uprooting and waving languidly in the air.

_(Goddess! Help me!)_

There was no response. The Goddess had abandoned her.

Pounding closer and closer to the gateway to hell . . . she screamed shrilly, squirming madly. At the last, right as the horse leaped in the air, she wrenched her arm free, and caught at the side of the entrance, trying to wrest herself loose.

And the roots snapped shut on her arm, grinding powerfully into the skin. The grip of the tree won out over the grip of the Horseman, and she was yanked off his lap. The next thing she knew, she was dangling in the air by her arm, perilously close to having it wrenched out of its socket.

She screamed for all she was worth. The Hessian turned back, stared at her indifferently, then unsheathed his sword.

_(No! No! My arm, my ARM!)_

With a quick, careless flash of his thrice-cursed sword, she was suddenly sitting on the ground.

Dazedly, she raised the smoking stump that ended just above the elbow, and gazed at it, confused. For a few moments, shock prevented her from feeling any pain. But then. . .

Oh, lightning agony! Burning pain, her arm was burning, being lanced with hot knives, beaten with a hammer! It throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and in that moment, she wanted nothing else except to feel her heartbeat stop, that the pain might stop as well.

Then he was dragging her away by her hair. She barely felt it, too involved in her mutilation. She clutched the stump to her chest and wept, baptizing it with her tears and causing the cauterized wound to sting all the more from the salt.

She was being dragged down a corridor, a dank, dusty hall stuffed with leering corpses. He was dragging her one way. The hall branched off another way, a way that ended with a door.

Surprising even herself, she ripped loose from the Horseman's grasp, leaving behind a clump of her blonde hair, and darted down the hall towards the door.

She reached it, collapsed against it, jiggled the doorknob frantically. It turned - it opened! - And she was out! Free! She ran as fast as she could in no particular direction, thinking only, _"Away!!_" Away from the hall of nightmares, away from the one man in the world who had the most reasons to despise her and wish her slow horrible death.

For hours it seemed she fled, panting and flailing against grasping branches, changing direction whenever she heard hoofbeats. Then she stumbled into a clearing.

A little dark-haired girl was standing in the middle, holding a branch in her hands. Lady Van Tassel screeched to a halt, looked at her with a growing sense of dread and foreboding. Oh, the irony of it if this little girl . . . she beseeched her with her eyes to stay silent, even mimicking the gesture of that day and raising a finger to her lips.

The girl bared fiercely pointy teeth, white-blue eyes flashed. The snap of the shattering stick cracked through the clearing, echoed in her ears. Surely he had heard, the whole world could not have helped hearing it.

She collapsed bonelessly. Only then did she realize that the little girl was gone, and that half the shattered stick lay in her limp hand, the other half under her foot. She had betrayed herself.

The horseman thundered towards her, teeth bared in a grin of primal joy, swinging his sword low. Mary Archer Van Tassel closed her eyes and resigned herself to her fate.

There was a momentary flash of incredible pain, and then nothing . . .

* * *

_And thus I made my way to St. Peter at the gates_

_Trying my best to hide my wickedness and hate._

_"My name is Mary Van Tassel," I said_

_"And I've led a pure and virtuous life."_

_Sparing a moment to frown at my poor severed head, he said,_

_"Purity and virtue is not a husband murdered by his wife._

_Nor is it raising a sinner from his grave to execute your revenge._

_Poisoning your predecessor, who was already at death's edge,_

_And killing your misguided sister, also was a sin._

_My dear, I don't believe you realize the kind of trouble that you're in."_

_With that he reached over, and yanked a golden chain._

_The cloud I stood on vanished, and then I was falling with the rain._

_Suddenly my downward flight was halted; I fell into a boiling pot_

_I knew exactly where I was, surrounded by devils, decay and rot._

_My cauldron was wheeled off to a cell, and I was ushered in_

_Imagine my dismay when I found my roommate was the Hessian!_


End file.
